


Forging a Sword

by bees_stories



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels are Dicks, Dean's relationship with his father, Gen, Meddling Angels, Michael Sword, Teen!Dean, angelic vessels, physical training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-04
Updated: 2014-09-04
Packaged: 2018-02-16 03:07:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2253546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bees_stories/pseuds/bees_stories
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean was destined to be the Michael Sword. But as anyone knows, forging a sword is tricky business. Too many strikes of a hammer could ruin an otherwise promising weapon, but being over judicious meant risking never taking the blade to its full potential. Somehow the angel Luther has to help John Winchester find that balance.<br/>A/N: Written for a hoodie_time prompt: outsider point of view of Dean and his father.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forging a Sword

***

Getting transferred to the cohort responsible for the recruiting and training of angelic vessels was generally regarded as a good thing.

A plum assignment.

A soft post. 

The majority of the potentials were devout humans of good moral character who followed the Golden Rule. Most of the time all they needed from their angelic advisers was an occasional whisper of encouragement or a nudge in the right direction when they faced a weighty dilemma. 

Dean Winchester was different. 

He wasn't religious. He wasn't especially moral. For such a young man he was surprisingly jaded. Watchers had been assigned to shadow Dean, just in case he got into more than his usual share of trouble and needed to be bailed out.

But for all of his failings, Dean Winchester was special. 

In point of fact, Dean Winchester was _Chosen_. 

Looking after Dean wasn't so much as a plum assignment as a hazardous mission. He wasn't just the potential vessel for an angel, he was the potential vessel of an _archangel_. And he wasn't just anyone's vessel, either. It was ordained that Dean would be _The Michael Sword_ , and thus he was very special indeed. 

Luther materialized in a partially wooded field and took a moment to enjoy the view and to compose himself before the briefing reconvened. A moment later Zachariah appeared at his side. They were both invisible to the humans they'd come to observe. 

Dean was currently bent over, chest heaving, his hands propped against his knees as he caught his breath. On the ground next to his feet was a sturdy khaki canvas rucksack. The top was open and large river rocks tumbled onto the sparse grass at Dean's feet. He was being observed rather coolly by his father and Bobby Singer, a man who was often mentor to the Winchester family.

Luther heard Zachariah's unimpressed harrumph and he tried to project optimism he didn't entirely feel. Zachariah had called for the impromptu inspection. He hadn't been pleased with Dean for some months. He was dismayed that, despite his strict military-like upbringing, the boy seemed to be showing a disturbing tendency towards stubbornness and independent thinking, rather than developing the malleable temperament and unquestioning obedience requisite in a potential vessel. Luther knew those traits were typical for a young man of Dean's age, and with time he would settle down. It was part of the process, he had tried to explain during the interrupted briefing. Like all truly fine swords Dean needed to be forged; hammered into shape through a long and arduous process. Only then, when he was older, could his real training as Michael’s vessel begin.

"Atten-tion!" John shouted. 

Despite his evident fatigue, Dean obeyed. 

"Your time was seven minutes slower then yesterday's. What is that?"

"Lousy, sir!" Dean's voice cracked as he shouted nearly as loudly as John had. It was one more sign of his physical exhaustion that John seemed to dispassionately note, but otherwise ignore.

"Damn straight it was lousy!" John glanced down at the sack full of heavy stones and then at his son. For a fraction of a second he seemed to soften and then his face grew hard with resolve. "Drop and give me one hundred!" 

Dean dropped. And then he started doing pushups. Hands splayed against the rough ground. Back absolutely level. Stomach contracted tightly. He rose and fell rhythmically, counting each repetition as he reached the apex of the maneuver. 

"You've been working on the father?" Zachariah asked as the moon came out from behind a cloud, illuminating the surrounding countryside in blue-white light.

Luther nodded. His strategy had been carefully outlined in his report, but he recapped it again. "I've been influencing his dreams. Sending John visions of young Dean using feats of strength and endurance to save his brother and other innocents from demons and monsters. When John prays for guidance, I assure him that what he is doing to Dean, even though it seems harsh, is right and necessary." 

Zachariah nodded and it seemed, for the moment, he was at least partially mollified as he watched Dean raise and lower himself to the ground repeatedly with perfect form. One hundred came with a surprising degree of speed. Though he was clearly exhausted, Dean hauled himself to his feet and back to attention. Sweat poured down the boy's face. His jaw was set in rigid lines as he worked to control his breathing. As passively as he was able, he waited for his father's next order. 

It wasn't long in coming. Zachariah's eyes sharpened in anticipation as John tossed a sawed-off shotgun at his son. "This could be interesting. The boy is clearly seething under that bland mask and his father has just given him a loaded gun." 

Dean caught the weapon easily with one hand, even though John had lobbed it with unnecessary force. Despite his fatigue from the grueling run and the set of pushups, Dean's training served him well. He inspected the exterior, running a practiced hand over the stock and barrels as if he had learned its various textures blindfolded, and then he broke the shotgun open to make sure it was loaded. He extracted the cartridges and held them in his hand, evaluating them. Something struck him as being off. Dean frowned and then he replaced the shells with fresh ones from his vest pocket. 

John stalked up to Dean. He folded his hands against his chest and looked down at his son. "Problem, recruit?" 

"The shells were the wrong gauge, sir. Those were 20 gauge." Dean held the gun out for inspection. "This is a twelve gauge."

"And what happens if you load the wrong shells into a shotgun?" John asked in his drill instructor's voice.

"You run the risk of blowing off a body part, sir," Dean answered promptly.

"Good answer," John's companion said. 

Dean's gaze flicked towards Bobby just long enough to acknowledge the praise before he returned to looking out at nothing.

"All right. That's enough time wasting. Move out!" John ordered.

Warily, with eyes narrowed to slits and his face set in deep lines of concentration, Dean complied, cautiously entering into a thick patch of woods and the next leg of the training exercise. 

John raised a pair of night-vision field glasses and tracked Dean's progress as he explored the wood. Bobby waited until Dean was out of earshot and then he spoke harshly to his companion "Nice one, John. You know this ain't Camp Pendleton, and that boy of yours ain't a jarhead. Carrying a pack of rocks through an endurance course and top that off with a hundred for being slow? Giving him a shotgun loaded with the wrong gauge shells? I guess the kid's lucky we didn't have a fresh corpse lying around for you to plant so you could teach him 'never leave a man behind'." 

Luther knew John's companion well, and normally he would have welcomed his presence during a training exercise. Bobby Singer was a veteran hunter. As a mentor he had a calming influence, preferring the slow and methodical approach to training, and a balanced approach to life in general. He was the sort of steadying presence the Winchesters, all the Winchesters, needed to keep them from slipping onto the darker paths that sometimes lured hunters.

But Zachariah wouldn't welcome his interference. Even though he styled himself a progressive manager, he could be rather old testament in his overall outlook, preferring trial by fire, rather than anything more judicious. He wasn't the sort to let a little thing like a vessel's age worry him when upper management said they had a deadline.

Luther thought of Joan of Arc. A sweet kid with a feisty temper. She'd been only a few years older than Dean when she'd ridden off to war filled with holy zeal. Michael had sent her visions and whispered in her ear, but Zachariah had been the one to really set events in motion. Then, as now, he wasn't going to tolerate anyone intervening in their plans. 

Luther tensed as he waited for John to reply. 

"That's not a bad idea." John seemed to file the corpse suggestion away and then he went back to concentrating on the view through the binoculars.

"John, I'm serious," Bobby said more adamantly. "Training's one thing, but this?"

"I'm toughening him up," John said flatly. It was plain he really didn't want to debate his methods. He fiddled with the focus on his glasses and took a breath, the only giveaway that he was, in fact, anxious for his son. 

A spirit emerged from out of the gloom. In life she had been Miss Edna May Johnson and her neighbors in Grand Rapids largely regarded her as a sour apple. She was widely renowned for her florid cursing of newsboys with poor aim and tardy milkmen. 

Death had not improved her temper. She cursed Dean vividly as she shook a bony fist in apparent outrage.

But ghost or no ghost, Bobby wasn't entirely willing to end the discussion. At least not without making his point as plainly as he could. "I'm just saying, John, Dean's still a kid. He's barely fifteen. I know he's got to enter the life some day, but don't you think you're pushing him just a little?"

The shotgun roared and Edna May disappeared from view, her ectoplasm temporarily disrupted by a shower of salt. In her absence, Dean scrambled, looking for whatever it was that tied her spirit to the earth. 

There was no grave, Luther knew. Edna May's bones moldered in a family plot back in Grand Rapids. But there was a silk handbag, in remarkably good condition considering its age, buried in the thick carpet of leaves. Dean found it just as Edna May reappeared. He looked at the ghost with an expression of frustration, and then his gaze darted to his fist and the pale silk and sterling silver object he clutched between his fingers. Dean shrugged. He pulled a shotgun shell and his lighter from various pockets, dumped salt over the bag, and then ignited the fringe. It caught, and Edna May finally went to her reward, shrieking it was about time.

"He thinks on his feet," Zachariah said begrudgingly as Dean ejected the spent cartridges from his shotgun, reloaded, and then darted off into the woods and out of view for a trial that John must have previously specified. "He's not the brightest star in the sky, but he uses what he's got." He clapped a hand on Luther's shoulder. "Keep up the pressure on the dad, I like the way he channels his anxiety onto the boy. That's good." He glanced at Bobby and the pleased expression dimmed. "Watch out for that one. He could be trouble." 

With a whoosh of wings, Zachariah dematerialized and Luther was left on his own. He returned his attention to John and Bobby. Whatever John had said in reply to Bobby's rebuke was lost in the wake of Zachariah's departure. But he looked faintly troubled, as if Bobby's words had finally struck, at least a little ways, home. 

Time passed. The shotgun barked again. The moon disappeared behind a blanket of clouds and the night grew darker and colder. John glanced at his watch and then he raised a whistle to his lips and blew sharply, evidently ending the training session. 

Ten minutes later, Dean came out of the clearing at run. He stopped a few feet from his father and Bobby and once again came to stand at attention, his spine erect and his gaze focused at the middle distance, like a soldier on parade. 

A pair of rabbits, tied together with a shoelace, hung over Dean's left shoulder. His shotgun was slung over the right. John inspected his son closely. He examined the rabbits and nodded once. "At ease, boy." 

Dean fell into parade rest and it seemed Bobby felt that John's command gave him permission to speak freely as well. He took the rabbits from Dean's shoulder and slung them over his own. "Good job, son. And as it happens, I've got all the makings for a fantastic rabbit fricassee back at the cabin."

John's face darkened and for a moment it seemed as if he was about to speak, but he looked at Bobby, chatting animatedly with Dean, and let out a breath instead. 

Luther studied the trio thoughtfully as he considered the shaping of a sword. Too many strikes of a hammer could ruin an otherwise promising weapon. But being over careful meant risking never taking the blade to its full potential. It was his job to strike a balance, and to make sure that the boy's father and any others who might mentor Dean, came to a similar understanding. There would be hard days ahead for Dean Winchester. Very hard days when his body would be challenged to its physical limit. And as for his mind … 

Luther sighed. Being an archangel's vessel wasn't a fate he would wish on anyone. Especially not a half-grown boy. He hoped that someday, when his destiny was revealed to him, Dean would understand why his father had been so hard on him, and as his last act as a human, forgive him. Because with an angel whispering in his ear, John Winchester knew not what he did.

End


End file.
